Police in United Kingdom

Concept of Police

The following is an old definition of Police [1], a term which has several meanings:1. The polity of a community with respect to the liberty, safety, health, morals, tranquillity, and happiness enjoyed by its members. Compare POLICY, 1

Alternative Meaning

Regulations for promoting the general welfare of the people of a State. In the abstract sense, divided into adminis- trative and preventive police; and spoken of as the police power, internal police, public police, and police purposes or regulations. ” Public police and economy ” mean the due regulation and domestic order of the kingdom, whereby the individuals of the state, like members of a well-governed family, are bound to conform their general behavior to the rules of propriety, good neighborhood, and good manners, and to be decent, industrious, and inoffensive in their respective stations. Offenses against public police comprise all such crimes as especially affect public society and are not comprehended under offenses against public justice, peace, trade, or health. Among these offenses are clandestine marriages, bigamy, common nuisances, idleness, gaming, and infractions of sumptuary laws. The power of “internal police” includes all those powers which relate to merely municipal legislation. The ” police power” is the power vested in the legislature by the constitution to make, ordain and establish all manner of wholesome and reasonable laws, statutes, and ordinances, either with or without penalties, not repugnant to the constitution, as they shall judge to be for the good and welfare of the commonwealth, and of the subjects of the same. The power by which the health, good order, peace, and general welfare of the community are promoted. The States have full power to regulate within their limits matters of internal police, including in that general designation whatever will promote the peace, comfort, convenience, and prosperity of their people. The power in each State to prescribe regulations to promote the health, peace, morals, education, and good order of the people. None of the amendments to the Constitution interfere with this power. Legislation which secures to all protection in their rights, and the equal use and enjoyment of their property, embraces an almost infinite variety of subjects. Whatever affects the peace, good order, morals, and health of the community, comes within its scope; and every one must use his property subject to the restric- tions which such legislation imposes. The police power of the State can only interfere with the conduct of individuals in their intercourse with each other, and in the use of their property, so far as may be re- quired to secure these objects. There is also the further limitation that no such regulation may encroach, upon the free exercise of the power vested in Congress to regulate commerce. The power certainly extends to the protection of the lives, health, and property of the citizens, and to the preservation of good order and the public morals. The legislature cannot divest itself of the power to provide for these objects. They belong to that class of objects which demand the application of the maxim, salus populi suprema lexj and they are to be attained and provided for by such appropriate means as the legislative discretion may devise. This discre- tion can no more be bargained away than the power itself. The government may, by general regulations, interdict such uses of property as would create nuisances and become dangerous to the lives, health, peace, or comfort of the citizens. Unwholesome trades, slaughter-houses, operations offensive to the senses, the deposit of powder, the application of steam-power to propel cars, building with combustible materials, and the burial of the dead, may all be interdicted on the general, and rational principle that every person ought so to use his property as not to injure his neighbors, and that private interests must be made subservient to the general interests of the community. A law passed in the legitimate exercise of this power is not obnoxious because It does not provide compensation for inconvenience to the individual. He is rewarded by the common benefits secured. See Take, 8. Lotteries, for example, are subjects for the exercise pf the power – which the legislature cannot grant away. It is easier to determine whether a particular case comes within the general scope of the power, than to give an abstract definition of the power itself which will be in all respects accurate. The power was not surrendered to the United States, but remains complete, unqualified, and exclusive in the States. If one were to attempt to define a subject so diversified and multifarious, we would say, that every law came within this description which concerned the welfare of the whole people of a State,, or of any individual within it; whether it related to their rights or their duties; whether it respected them as men or as citizens of the State, and whether in their public or private relations; whether it related to the rights of persons, or of properly, of the whole people of a State, or of any individual within it; and whose operation was within the territorial limits of the State, and upon the persons and things within its jurisdiction. Within its category comes every law for the restraint and punishment of crime, and for the preservation of the public peace, health, and morals. Although a State is botmd to receive and to permit the sale, by the impoiler, of any article of merchandise which Congress authorizes to be imported, it is not bound to furnish a market for it, nor to abstain from the passage of any law which it may deem necessary or advisable to guard the health or morals of its citizens, although such law may discourage importation, diminish the profits of the importer, or lessen the revenue of the general government. The States have power to prevent the introduction into them of articles of trade which, on account of their existing condition, would bring in and spread disease and death. Such articles are not merchantable; they are not legitimate subjects of trade and commerce. They may be rightly outlawed, as intrinsically and directly the immediate sources and causes of destruction to health and life. If the right of the States to pass statutes to protect themselves in regard to the criminal, the pauper, and the diseased foreigner, exists at all, it is liqaited to such laws as are absolutely necessary, for that purpose, – else it invades the power in Congress to regulate commerce. In their leading features, the power of ” eminent domain ” and the ” police power ” are plainly different, the latter reaching even to the destruction of property, as in tearing down a house to prevent the spread of a conflagration, or to removal at the expense of the owner, as in the case of a nuisance tending .to breed disease. In the first instance, the community proceeds on the groimd of overwhelming calamity; in the second, because of the fault of the owner of the thing; and in either case compensation is not a condi- tion of the exercise of the power. The same general principles attend its exercise in other directions, audit is generally based upon disaster, fault, or inevitable necessity. On the other hand, the power of eminent domain is conditioned generally upon compensation to the owner, and for the most part is founded, not in calamity or fault, but in public utility. These distinctions clearly mark the cases distant from the border line between the two powers, but in or near to it they begin to fade into each other, and it is difficult to say when compensation becomes a duty and when not. See Domain, Eminent. See also Commerce; Health; Inspection; Levee; License,3; Monopoly; Oleomargarine; Prohibition. 3. The body of oflcers charged with the duty of enforcing those laws of a community (in particular of a municipality) intended to preserve and promote the public peace, morals, health, security, and happiness. Police court. An inferior court exercising a limited jurisdiction over offenses of a criminal nature; and, perhaps, also, a limited civil jurisdiction. See Peace, 1, Justice; Summary. Police justice or magistrate. A magistrate charged exclusively with the duties incident to the common-law office of a conservator or justice of the peace. The prefix ” police ” may serve merely to distinguish them from justices having also civil jurisdiction. Police officer. May designate one of a class of persons who are not constables. See Riot.

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Notes and References

1. Meaning of Police provided by the Anderson Dictionary of Law (1889)